Macro on Monday - Guess What

Another full house for last week's mystery photo. Congratulations and the virtual gold star to TexWisGirl, Adrian, Glo, Keith, Wilma and Sue Garrett for identifying the golf ball. The reference to eagle and albatross referred to terminology used for scoring in golf.


Bobby was very good at finding lost golf balls where people had been practicing on the cricket field.


   


Here we go then. A crop of an object for this week's mystery photo.
Guess What:


Clue: Bottoms up.

No prizes. Just for fun.
The answer, along with any guesses left in the comments, will be revealed next Monday.

Daytime Moon

Friday at the Flicks - Goldfinch

I usually have up to half a dozen Goldfinches visiting but this morning there was just one enjoying some sunlight and a free meal:

No sound on this video:


Have a nice weekend observing the wildlife around you.

Twist in Action

A quick video this morning showing how the iPhone app Twist produces its results. Looking straight down on top of a rotating pitcher plant. First with a decreasing circle slit and then a linear slit. The iPhone was clamped on a tripod. It's the hand held Nikon which is wobbling about!




   

Among other effects there is one where several random shapes expand while slicing the photo giving a more surreal effect:

Slit Photography

While I was researching something else I came across the topic of slit photography. This is where a set of stills of a moving object are reprocessed into one photo with a one pixel wide row or column being taken from each of the originals. Or a moving object is photographed live but with one pixel wide rows or columns being processed at set time intervals until the whole frame has been covered.

Some examples can be found at Slit-Cam, The Time Machine and Discover Digital Photography.

Some of the sample results I saw got me to investigate further hoping to find a free program for the PC which would produce similar results. Ages searching and reading brought up two but I couldn't get on with either. The first was very simple to use but didn't seem to be ale to make a full size photo, only producing a small section. The other used java scripts which needed modifying every time the photos used were changed.

Then I decided to look to see what free apps for the iPhone were available. Found two and a quick trial of each did produce results. Both are used live, that is while shooting a moving object. Those tried were 'Twist' and 'Slit-Cam' Not the sort of photo apps which can be used hand held so the iPhone was tripod mounted.

I set up a potted plant on my arduino driven stepper rotating platform and tried them out.



Results:







I like some of the effects. 'Twist' gives several possible ways of streaking the photos but the resultant resolution is poor. OK on a phone but not much use any larger. Also it is heavily advert driven which can be a real pain. If there were a higher quality ad free paid for version then it would be worth experimenting further.

The free version of 'Slit-Cam' has ads but not so intrusive. There is a paid for ad free version with higher resolution.

'Twist' seems to have a fixed frame rate but 'Slit-Cam' can be adjusted from 1 frame per second to 30fps..

Macro on Monday - Guess What

An excellent set of guesses for last week's mystery photo with eight out of eight correct so congratulations and the virtual Gold Star to Adrian, TexWisGirl, Sue Garrett, Wilma, ImaBurdie, Glo and Ragged Robin who identified the fat ball and to Bonnie for thinking it was a suet cake, which it could well have been.


   


Nearly didn't get a new one for this week. Firstly I just couldn't find anything until the last minute (nothing new there) and then the 50D threw a wobbly. Switching it on it came up 'can't make a folder' and then refused to start up! Long search on the net for possible causes. Turned out to be a fault with the memory card so I re-formatted that but the camera had to be left powered down for quite a while before it would start up again. All appears to be working OK now, but without Magic Lantern.

Anyway This is the challenge for this week.
Guess What:

In case you need it -
Clue: featherless but could be connected with an eagle and an albatross.

No prizes, just for fun.
Answer, along with any guesses left in the comments will be revealed next Monday.

Latest Toy

It's a while since I built an electronic rain gauge using an Arduino and a four line LCD to show the readings. This seems to be working well and the readings tally with the commercial one which suddenly started working again! For October the totals were 3 inches on the commercial one and 75mm on my home made version.

What I want is a more sophisticated display and to add more readings (temperature, barometric pressure and humidity) with a graphical display. To this end I have been researching which colour graphical LCD displays might be used with an Arduino.

Recently I bought a small colour display (128 x 128 pixels, 1.25 inches square) which plugs straight in to an Arduino Uno or Seeeduino to try out and see how well it would work:



Don't go thinking this is all my own work. I am experimenting with some example files I downloaded. Tinkering with those is a good way to learn how to program it. On the whole I am pleased but wish, of course, I had bought a larger display so I now have a 2.4 inch (240x320 pixels) one on order from China. If all works out as I tentatively plan I could end up using both displays.